North Korea’s Heir Apparent Remains a Mystery

SEOUL, South Korea — There is only one photograph available outside North Korea thought to be that of the man South Korean officials believe will inherit the world’s most unpredictable regime, one that is armed with nuclear weapons. In that picture, the man, Kim Jong-un, a son of the ailing North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, is an 11-year-old.

“When Prince Jong-un shook hands with me, he fixed me with a vicious look,” Kim Jong-il’s former Japanese sushi chef wrote in a 2003 memoir describing his first encounter with the boy, then 7, dressed in a military uniform and known as a “prince” among his father’s aides. “I still cannot forget the look in his eyes. It seemed to say, ‘This is a despicable Japanese.’ ”

The chef, who goes by the pen name Kenji Fujimoto, said in an interview that as a teenager, Kim Jong-un was already his father’s favorite and “looked just like him.”

The lone photo and Mr. Fujimoto’s memories form part of the few precious strands of information analysts and intelligence officials in South Korea and Washington rely on as they struggle to put together a dossier on Kim Jong-un, the youngest and least-known of Kim Jong-il’s three sons.

“We picture a charismatic young man, authoritarian, politically astute and precocious and ambitious,” said Cheong Seong-chang, a researcher at the Sejong Institute, near Seoul. “We picture Little Kim Jong-il.”

The question of who will succeed Kim Jong-il has grown in importance since he was reported to have suffered a stroke in August. Last week, South Korean news reports, lawmakers and analysts who have access to intelligence assessments said that Mr. Kim, 67, had decided to hand over the reins to Kim Jong-un while North Korean generals, ruling party officials and diplomats abroad were all pledging fealty to the son.

But the walls of secrecy that surround North Korean leaders make the guessing about who is in and who is out in the succession game notoriously difficult. Indeed, the dearth of information about Kim Jong-un speaks volumes about how little the world knows about North Korea itself.

Intelligence officials acknowledge that much of what they have gleaned is little more than conjecture, based on secondhand information from sources inside North Korea but not independently verified.

The North Korean media have never shown images of Kim Jong-un in public or mentioned him by name, said Kim Sang-kook, a senior North Korea analyst at the Unification Ministry in Seoul.

Until Mr. Fujimoto released the photo to the South Korean television network KBS in February, there had been no picture at all of the son. The chef said he was given the picture shortly before he fled to Japan in 2001. Mr. Fujimoto and most analysts say the son was born on Jan. 8, 1983, but others insist that he was born in 1984.

Photo

There is only one photograph available outside North Korea of Kim Jong-un; it is of him as an 11-year-old with a bratty grin.Credit
Kenji Fujimoto, via Reuters

Kim Jong-il apprenticed at important party and military posts for more than 20 years before officially assuming power after the death of his father, Kim Il-sung, in 1994. He appeared with his father in mass gatherings, and his photos decorated the walls of government buildings beside his father’s. No such early grooming has been reported for Kim Jong-un.

“We know almost nothing about the young man,” said Andrei Lankov, a Russian-born North Korea specialist at Kookmin University in Seoul. “Very young, without any administrative experience to speak of, and without his own coterie — he had not had time to create a power base. He will be an obedient puppet in the hands of people who lobbied for this decision. Who are these people? I have no idea, to be frank.”

The power elite will support another hereditary succession, to keep the peace, some analysts say. But “whoever the new leader is, it will be a collective leadership in name or actuality,” said Bruce Klingner at the Heritage Foundation, who has worked as a Korea analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Kim Jong-il had at least five children with three women. Sung Hae-rim, a movie star, gave birth to Kim Jong-nam, now 38. She became estranged from Kim Jong-il after he married Kim Young-sook, who gave birth to one daughter (some say two) but no son.

Then Mr. Kim fell for Ko Young-hee, the prima donna of North Korea’s premier opera, who was born in Japan and emigrated to the North in the 1960s. She had two sons — Kim Jong-chol, now 28, and Kim Jong-un — and a daughter, Kim Yeo-jong, 22. Until Ms. Ko died of breast cancer in 2004, she was Mr. Kim’s de facto first lady and a fierce campaigner for her sons.

With no mother to promote him to his father, Kim Jong-nam scuttled what remote chance he had of succession when he was caught and deported while sneaking into Japan on a fake passport in 2001. He was headed for Tokyo Disneyland.

The middle son, Kim Jong-chol, attended the International School of Berne in Switzerland in the 1990s under the pseudonym Pak Chol, according to analysts and journalists in Seoul, as well as Mr. Fujimoto — though other analysts dispute these accounts. He was said to be a fan of Michael Jordan, Eric Clapton and Keanu Reeves. Mr. Fujimoto wrote that Ms. Ko often took her sons on trips to Europe and Tokyo Disneyland, and that Kim Jong-un learned English.

Analysts are divided over whether Kim Jong-un also attended the school in Switzerland. They say he was enrolled from 2002 to 2007 in the Kim Il-sung Military University, a leading officer-training school in Pyongyang, the capital, but was taught at home. The son, these accounts say, is about 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighs more than 200 pounds.

Mr. Fujimoto said in an interview that the young man he last saw in 2001 was stocky and athletic but not fat. He said Kim Jong-il dismissed Kim Jong-chol as “girlish” but openly complimented Kim Jong-un, saying, “That boy is like me.”

The sons lived a life few North Koreans could imagine: swimming pools, water fountains, bowling alleys, billiard rooms, inline skating tracks, a beach, Jet Skis and horses.

An episode relayed by Mr. Fujimoto and often cited by analysts to illustrate Kim Jong-un’s sequestered existence, if not his leadership qualities, took place several years ago when the chef and Kim Jong-un were smoking a cigarette in a car. Mr. Kim, then 18, looked into the distance and, according to the chef’s account, said: “We are here, playing basketball, riding horses, riding Jet Skis, having fun together. But what of the lives of the average people?”

Choe Sang-hun reported from Seoul, and Martin Fackler from Tokyo.

A version of this article appears in print on , on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Cryptic Man, Known Only by One Photo and Anecdotes, May Lead North Korea. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe